Played one 2P game with heavy trashing (Transmogrify, Governor, Doctor and we did not even use Remodel and Trading Post) game with King so far. One player bought 5 kings and gained 15 VP tokens whereas the other bought 3 kings and gained 5 VP tokens (the last King this player bought was a mistake).
The card was strong due to moderately thing decks, quick deck cycling (Governor) and little money (Training "Peddler-ified" action cards, Governor for one player and Familiar, gained via Recruiter for the other player). As I expected the VP tokens were the smallest asset of the card. 3 VP tokens on average per card for the guy who bought Kings early and 1.7 for the guy who bought them later is less than an average Bishop, Monument or Goon nets. As other folks here have already said, the coin tokens make a delaying of the game to gain VP tokens unlikely. It also makes it tricky to evaluate when to switch from Kings to Provinces.
So yeah, the clear strength of the card over Grand Market or other DoublePeddlers like Conspirator are the coin tokens so I guess the card would be OK for 8 even without the +1VP token.
During the next games I will play it with "When you gain this card each other player +1 VP token", making the VP token thingy even weaker (in this game it would have reduced the extra VP tokens from 15 to 10 and from 5 to 2). I think the card would also work decently at 9 but only in Province games and in Colony games with trashing (then an early King can be useful) KC/TR (obviously making the card superstrong). Otherwise Platinum is superior to King as it is the quicker way towards Colonies.
At 8$, a card has to be gamechanging like Prince or Possession, otherwise, it's too boring.
Nope. A card does not have to be anything except well balanced. Whether one likes a card or not is purely subjective.
People who do not want to play with vanilla-ish card do not have to and as I have already said in my initial post, this is simply what King is, a vanilla-ish card and nothing game changing like Price or Possession. For me the Province/King trade-off, making the "when to switch from building your engine to going to explot it" decision (which is at the core of Dominion and nothing one can truly master) even more tricky, is sufficient to make the card moderately interesting.
Kudos to folks who can come up with a great idea for an 8$ card that is as exciting as Prince or Possession and the stamina to actually playtest it until it works (far more difficult and time-consuming than with a vanilla-ish card), it is beyond my abilities.
I don't want many narrow cards (which a super-expensive card is likely to be).
I am aware that an 8$ card is narrow in two senses. First, it can break the game if one player gains it early (Prince relaxes this via its high randomness, sometimes you cannot play Prince ocne you first draw it as it matches no cheap/decent action card). Second, it is bought less frequently over different decks / less often during one game than other cards.
Donald is totally right that there should be no 8$ card in a normal Dominion set, they are just too wacky. But then again nobody here is so arrogant as to assume that some stupid fan cards can as good as official cards.